Chapter 1: State-Level Education Reform: Putting All the Pieces Together

Over the years, states have played increasingly important roles in district and school reform. Most people are aware that the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) tightened states’ roles in dealing with district and school accountability. However, well before NCLB, many states had not only already started their own accountability initiatives but also were engaged in whole state, comprehensive education reform. In addition, in mathematics and science, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided extensive federal support for reform through its Statewide Systemic Initiative (NSF-SSI). Overall, state-level efforts may have heavily influenced the district-level reforms discussed in the other chapters of this book. Yet, the full picture of how state-level reform works, including the role of externally-funded initiatives such as the NSF-SSI, has yet to be pieced together.